Macro photography: the DIY solution

I’m not sure who originally said that, but whoever they are, they’re quite right.

Regular readers may have noticed that I *love* taking photos. I’ve got a variety of cameras, from my beloved Nikon D50, the fabulous Panasonic TZ10, my cheap & cheerful Canon point & shoot, to an old plastic lensed Holga.

The camera I carry round with me though is the one in my phone. It’s an HTC Desire S, and takes perfectly decent photos. Well, perfectly decent for viewing on-screen. I’m not sure I’d want to blow them up to poster size!

One of the things I like doing is taking macro shots. The TZ10 and the Canon both have pretty decent macro modes, but my phone camera is a bit lacking in that department.

One day I noticed that Photojojo (brilliant site) were selling a ‘macro lens band‘ – basically a rubber band with a mini lens in it which gave your phone camera better macro capabilities. They sell a range of others too, but the macro lens band looked cheap & cheerful, coming in at $15+ shipping to the UK.

Ah, there’s the rub. USPS first class would take 2-4 weeks and cost at least $12. Making a cheap & cheerful toy into a $27 investment. Hmm. Shelve that idea.

Some time later I saw a blog post (I forget exactly where, but there are a few around now) about making a cheap macro lens for your mobile phone. It involves taking the focussing lens out of a DVD drive and using that.

As it happened I had a spare non-working DVD drive knocking around (see, saving things *is* useful!), so set to with a screwdriver and managed to extract the tiny plastic lens with minimal damage to myself. Hardly any blood was shed. Bonus.

The lens itself measures a couple of milimetres across, and is a bit fiddly to hold. I did think about hacking an elastic band to fit the lens too, but that seemed a bit fiddly.

Then I struck on an idea. See?

One hair grip (thanks to my daughter!), a spot of superglue and you have a handle for the lens. It’s now fairly easy to hold in place on the phone – I may hack it further by adding an elastic band to hold it in place, or fashion something out of Sugru. As you can see, the photos come out pretty well!